Will monarchs continue to reign in the butterfly world?

Margaret Carney

Will monarchs make it? That’s the burning question as all eyes scan milkweed patches throughout Durham and beyond these days, hoping to see elegant orange butterflies lined with black. Descendants of those that wintered in Mexico should be arriving on every south wind, to nectar on the sweet-smelling mauve flowers and lay eggs on the leaves, milkweed being the only plant their caterpillars can feed on.

But Dianne Pazaratz told me she hasn’t yet seen a single monarch in the butterfly garden she created and takes care of in a north Oshawa park, though she did spot one in her backyard, lured by lush stands of bergamot and butterfly weed she grows there.

I saw two monarchs in my section of the Sunderland Butterfly Count, northwest of Uxbridge, on July 6, adding to the group total of 49. On the Haliburton count the following Saturday I found nine, while the final tally was 140 -- up a bit from last year’s dismal 31, but far from the 768 monarchs of 2012. Just like last year, it seemed eerie to wade through waist-high milkweed in full bloom and not encounter a single adult monarch or larva-chewed leaf.

Both count compilers, butterfly experts James Kamstra and Ed Poropat, told me they’re deeply concerned for monarchs, which encounter vast tracts of herbicide-sprayed, milkweed-barren fields on their annual 10,000-kilometre circuit, not to mention the use of neonicotinoids, as well as continued logging of mature fir trees they shelter on.

Though red admirals, American painted ladies and common sulfurs also migrate into Canada, most of the butterflies found on the counts are born and bred right here, laying their eggs on a wide range of native plants in their own ecological niches. You’ll find white admirals and common wood nymphs along woodland roads and forest edges, as well as little wood satyrs and northern pearly-eyes. Great spangled fritillaries, largest of a family of swift-flying, bright orange butterflies, decorate pastures, meadows and railway corridors. Summer azures and hairstreaks like overgrown, shrubby fields, while eyed browns fly up around your knees when you’re walking through wet sedges and reeds. All sorts of intriguing skippers hang out in tall grasses and sedges, just waiting to be identified.

Adults of many butterfly species readily feed on milkweed, each globular flower of which is made up of hundreds of tiny nectar-producing tubes. I saw a question mark -- a velvety orange and dark butterfly of the anglewing family -- so busily drinking that it let me get within a few feet and never even fluttered its wings.

It’s heartening that milkweed was finally taken off the Ontario noxious weed list this spring. May the seeds fly far and wide on their silken sails this fall, a boon to butterflies.